March for Life 2008

It was cold, wet, and a bit drizzly. Nothing wrong with that. The rally was two hours long. Nothing wrong with that, either. Putting the two of them together is a problem.

President Bush phoned in his greetings to the March (most likely out of security concerns). His remarks are here.

Ron Paul was the only Presidential candidate to speak. His supporters were there with banners (“Ron Paul for Life!” and “Ron Paul: Life, Liberty, and [smiley face]”) and paraphernalia. Yes, to his haters – he has supporters, they are fairly normal people, and they exist outside of the internet. Actually, it was really cool to see all of the Ron Paul supporters in action. They are passionate and really worked hard on the grass roots political effort thing. Okay, okay – this elephant is a sucker to see democracy (or representative democracy) in action. Freedom is a beautiful thing.

Actually, nearly every pro-life Congressman addressed the audience. Perhaps, as this is an election year, the organisers permitted anyone to speak. :) Priests, bishops, a rabbi, and a reverand also spoke. Terri Schiavo’s family (Schindler) was also there and spoke. It was great to see the pro-life movement talk about both abortion and euthanasia.

The March started at 2:00 pm. The last marchers passed the Senate Office Building at 3:30 pm. This blogger finally got off the Mall around 2:30 pm and hit the Senate building by 3:00 pm. Many marchers had finished the route before others had started.

Crowd density calculation info here. “A crowd of 500,000, he says, would have filled all eight panels, stretching from the Capitol Building to the Lincoln Memorial, or from Third Street to 14th Street.”

The march was, therefore, roughly two miles long and approximately 50 people across. Within one significant figure, that would be about 100,000 people.

Princeton, UMich, and West Virginia sent large groups (with big signs; we were lame and just picked up “I vote pro-life” signs as we got there). At one point, someone asked all of the under-25 group to raise their hands. (Man, that was a looong time ago!) Approximately 1/3d of the crowd had their hands in the air. Roughly equally male and female in the crowd. Approximately half of Kansas turned out for the event. (Do not laugh. This elephant has never seen so many people from Kansas in her life, including when she was in the state.)

Bad signs: do we really need the billboard-sized photos of aborted fetuses? Do we really need the comparisons to concentration camps and the Nazis? As for the first one: the picture of any surgical procedure is disguisting. The presence of blood does not a moral condemnation make. After all, child birth is not a pretty procedure; would we promote abortion because of the long-lasting effects of pregnancy and childbirth? Now, people say that they want to show the horrors of abortion. Well, that horror starts with the knowledge that there is a human being in there. Why not show high-res ultrasounds of 8-week old embryos, which look like really tiny, fully-formed babies?

As for the Nazis – yes, the numbers (millions slaughtered) are comparable, but the enemies are not. The evil of the Nazi regime was in the deliberation of herding millions of disfavoured groups (Jews, gays, the disabled) into cattle cars and to their deaths. Pro-choice advocates truly believe that they advocate for the choice of a pregnant woman, that pro-life legislation will not stop abortion but will make it less safe, and that the fetus really is nothing more than a clump of cells. Evil people are not to be reasoned with; they are to be stopped at gunpoint. Reasonable, albeit misguided, people are to be reasoned with and persuaded.

Finally, the rainbow at the end of the march – gorgeous! Say this isn’t the year that a Supreme Court justice leaves so we can get our anti-Roe, pro-Constitution Court.

Was that on Tuesday? We had some people locally in the Springs with signs, but it was a small showing. I did see a sign I like that said “Tolerate Uterus Dwellers”.

I do agree that there can be “bad” signs, if only for the reason that they probably aren’t effective when forced upon people. Neil hit it on the head a few months back, the images can be effective, but only shown when people are warned about it.